Making sustainability a top priority for all engineering

摘要

Sustainability will be one of the major themes of David Hood's presidency of Engineers Australia. He will take over the role from Merv Lindsay on 1 January 2012. A civil and environmental engineer, Hood, 68, runs his own consultancy business, and is an adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. He is the second president from that university in short succession after Prof Doug Hargreaves in 2010, and will be Engineers Australia's first environmental engineer to hold the national presidency. "I want to see sustainability become a priority consideration in all engineering endeavours, from education and career development to consulting and construction", he said. "Engineers must recognise that their work impacts not only on the economy but also on the environment and society as a whole. While we understand our impact on the economy quite well, we often don't realise that everything we do has an effect on the environment and society, and much of it is negative. "For instance, structural engineers often tell me that what they do has nothing to do with sustainability. But what about the embodied energy in different materials used in the construction and whole-of-life considerations for the structure?" Another concern is that engineers often believe they are pretty good at sustainability because they conform to environmental legislation, he warned, pointing out that environmental legislation usually lags behind and is often tainted by vested interests. "We must be more proactive and go deeper into sustainability questions than is now required by law." Hood wants to see sustainability embedded in engineering right from the start at the undergraduate education level. "Not only should sustainability be a framing consideration for every engineering course curriculum, but the universities should also practise it themselves by demonstrating sustainability through their own activities and facilities. "Some universities don't even have a corporate sustainability policy, let alone a strategy to implement sustainability initiatives." The same of course applies to Engineers Australia's own activities and facilities, he suggested. "We need to look at our own facilities management and ensure that we show leadership in energy efficiency and wider sustainability."